"You seem to know when I am about to speak," I said; "that is twice you
have responded to my unasked questions."
"I know it," she said, surprised and a trifle perplexed. "I seem to hear
you when you are mute, and I turn to find you looking at me, as though
you had asked me something."
We rode on, thoughtful, silent, aware of a new and wordless intimacy.
"It is pleasant to be with you," she said at last. "I have never before
found untroubled contentment save when I am alone.... Everything that
you see and think of on this ride I seem to see and think of, too, and
know that you are observing with the same delight that I feel.... Nor
does anything in the world disturb my happiness. Nor do you vex me with
silence when I would have you speak; nor with speech when I ride
dreaming--as I do, cousin, for hours and hours--not sadly, but in the
sweetest peace--"
Her voice died out like a June breeze; our horses, ear to ear moved on
slowly in the fragrant silence.
"To ride ... forever ... together," she mused, "looking with perfect
content on all the world.... I teaching you, or you me; ... it's all one
for the delight it gives to be alive and young.... And no trouble to
await us, ... nothing malicious to do a harm to any living thing.... I
could renounce Heaven for that.... Could you?"
"Yes.... For less."
"I know I ask too much; grief makes us purer, fitting us for the company
of blessed souls. They say that even war may be a holy thing--though we
are commanded otherwise.... Cousin, at moments a demon rises in me and I
desire some forbidden thing so ardently, so passionately, that it seems
as if I could fight a path through paradise itself to gain what I
desire.... Do you feel so?"
"Yes."
"Is it not consuming--terrible to be so shaken?... Yet I never gain my
desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking
my way. And I can never pass--never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr.
Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle
thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it--mad, cousin! But
Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my
honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough
for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, ... and I was mad to do
it--and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and
every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet,
cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks
the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"
She gathered bridle nervously, and we launched our horses through a
willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee
till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at
every stride of our bounding horses.
"Ah!" she sighed, drawing bridle. "That clears the heart of silly
troubles. Was it not glorious? Like a plunge to the throat in an
icy pool!"
Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where,
glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie
sparkled between green reeds and rushes. Beyond, smoky blue mountains
tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking
the flat valley of the Vlaie.
Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled
in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings;
hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden
flock. Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the
gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the
tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons.
Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets.
Across the distant grassy flat two deer moved, grazing. We rode to the
east, skirting the marshes, following a trail made by cattle, until
beyond the flats we saw the green roof of the pleasure-house which Sir
William Johnson had built for himself. Our ride together was
nearly ended.
As at the same thought we tightened bridle and looked at each other
gravely.
"All rides end," I said.
"Ay, like happiness."
"Both may be renewed."
"Until they end again."
"Until they end forever."
She clasped her bare hands on her horse's neck, sitting with bent head
as though lost in sombre memories.
"What ends forever might endure forever," I said.
"Not our rides together," she murmured. "You must return to the South
one day. I must wed.... Where shall we be this day a year hence?"
"Very far apart, cousin."
"Will you remember this ride?"
"Yes," I said, troubled.
"I will, too.... And I shall wonder what you are doing."
"And I shall think of you," I said, soberly.
"Will you write?"
"Yes. Will you?"
"Yes."
Silence fell between us like a shadow; then:
"Yonder rides Sir George Covert," she said, listlessly.